Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Same crime different continent

I have been wondering about certain developments in North America. Amongst the things that have changed is the class action law suits. This is no longer 'available' as an option to anyone anymore.

In the interim, the pensions... The pensions... I have always thought the general American is flaky and ready to blow anyone up for the smallest reasons. I'm beginning to doubt that now. I still do not yell at people practising road rage though. What? Did you not hear that the laws against people owning sophisticated guns such as Uzis wasnt renewed when it came up last year? But, I digress. The pensions... yes, those. Have you heard what the airlines are proposing to do with people's pensions? In the name of they cannot afford to pay them, they are handing them over to government agencies who are paying off only about 1/3 of the pensions to their holders? And oh, yeah, they are unable to file a class action law suit, unless with the federal courts. Oh yeah, who historically rarely find in favor of the plaintiff.

At the end of the day, when they release reports on corrupt countries, what do they look at? How do they draw their conclusions? Because I am not convinced the findings are accurate. Take the entire big picture, and tell me that Kenya is a lot more corrupt than North America. I don't believe it. They are just a lot more obvious because they are much poorer. They steal from development projects versus retirement funds. I don't know which here is the lesser evil but I'm thinking stealing from a person, in the later part of their lives, what they have spent their entire lives working for... not a good thing. So Enron went down, and no one brought to book yet. What about TYCO? With company million dollar birthday bashes for wives of prominent members of staff? And all these people still walking around free. Meanwhile... yeah, meanwhile, Martha Stewart is serving time. ok, house arrest now, but still serving time. And she affected how many people... yeah, ZERO! no one but herself. She protected her money. And this is a much bigger crime than stealing people's lifetime savings.

So yes, those Kenyan hooligans in parliament are terrible people. But they have counterparts in other various parts of the world. Some worse than others. About those flaky Americans... these people will shoot you for road rage, but will not go on sprees after people who steal their life savings? Or maybe things work differently here, better driving is preferred to affordable retirement. Who knows?

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